| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: a stamp of doom. Is not the forehead the most prophetic feature of a
man? When the stranger's brow expressed passion the furrows formed in
it were terrible in their strength and energy; but when he recovered
his calmness, so easily upset, it beamed with a luminous grace which
gave great attractiveness to a countenance in which joy, grief, love,
anger, or scorn blazed out so contagiously that the coldest man could
not fail to be impressed.
He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer-window of the
loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not observe the apparition
of three laughing faces, pink and white and chubby, but as vulgar as
the face of Commerce as it is seen in sculpture on certain monuments.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther: we could not attain of ourselves.
Learn, then, to understand this article most clearly. If you are
asked: What do you mean by the words: I believe in the Holy Ghost? you
can answer: I believe that the Holy Ghost makes me holy, as His name
implies. But whereby does He accomplish this, or what are His method
and means to this end? Answer: By the Christian Church, the forgiveness
of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. For,
in the first place, He has a peculiar congregation in the world, which
is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of
God, which He reveals and preaches, [and through which] He illumines
and enkindles hearts, that they understand, accept it, cling to it, and
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: Bianca helped me to kill the Provveditore. Once before she had refused
flight with me; but after six months of happiness she wished only to
die with me, and received several thrusts. I was entangled in a great
cloak that they flung over me, carried down to a gondola, and hurried
to the Pozzi dungeons. I was twenty-two years old. I gripped the hilt
of my broken sword so hard, that they could only have taken it from me
by cutting off my hand at the wrist. A curious chance, or rather the
instinct of self-preservation, led me to hide the fragment of the
blade in a corner of my cell, as if it might still be of use. They
tended me; none of my wounds were serious. At two-and-twenty one can
recover from anything. I was to lose my head on the scaffold. I
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Atheist's Mass by Honore de Balzac: to watch me at work, and took a mother's care in seeing that I
had wholesome and abundant food, instead of the bad and
insufficient nourishment I had been condemned to. Bourgeat, a man
of about forty, had a homely, mediaeval type of face, a prominent
forehead, a head that a painter might have chosen as a model for
that of Lycurgus. The poor man's heart was big with affections
seeking an object; he had never been loved but by a poodle that
had died some time since, of which he would talk to me, asking
whether I thought the Church would allow masses to be said for
the repose of its soul. His dog, said he, had been a good
Christian, who for twelve years had accompanied him to church,
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